The inquest......so what went wrong?

It's all there on lots of previous threads. Total mess, many to blame, most seemingly gone now. Not sure it is good for our mental health to keep reflecting and saying the same things anymore. Let's just look forward, yes excrement league but:
- New owners
- Actually going to the matches
- Enhanced match day experience
- proper preseason and a chance for Hurst to build his team for one season to sort it

UTM

Quoted from sapper mariner

not building on the momentum that was built when we left the NL

Totally agree..it was like we have done the hard work now bask in the glory

Morecombe were struggling and have been flirting with relegation for a number of years along with us but they got their act together and did something about it...  
Fenty did not invest in the failing team and the rest is history....   and without investment on the pitch the club will not recover....  So please take note new owners....  Investment on the pitch is vital or it will be a long long time before we see Town back in the Football league again...

Fenty definitely. 20 years of mismanagement. Technically 3 relegations to the conference. COVID contracts together with constant penny pinching but as he says we are solvent ffs. Business is about calculated risks but this man has just protected his own pocket even after the fans funded operation promotion. What a disaster this man has been for this club

Quoted from GrimRob

All started right back in 2016 when we dismantled the side that got us promotion in the first place. We should have built on that side and PH left only a few games in. I suspect he'd have stayed had we been more ambitious. Bignot was then a disastrous appointment as someone who wanted to change the world just when we needed stability. Since then we have been playing catch-up and it was inevitable we'd spiral back down into the bottom two at some stage. Holloway was the final nail in the coffin.

I had no issue with dismantling the side that won/scraped promotion (although obviously it would've been nice to keep the good players) - we were doing well until PH left and he left because of JF.

Fenty ..

70% Holloway for the bizarrely inexperienced and unbalanced squad he built plus the complete lack of preparation pre-season and his endless chopping and changing. A few lucky wins disguise just how poor his team really was. Also 30% Hurst for failing to turn things around quickly enough. I thought he'd get them organised enough to grind out the results to keep us up, but he wasn't able to do anything with the squad he inherited and the players he signed weren't nearly fit enough to make a quick impact. That's the problem with signings in the January transfer window - you generally only get players that other teams already don't want and any you do sign aren't fit in any case because they haven't been playing! Payne the killer blow - an utter disaster of a player for us on a par with Green (and Hanson hasn't been much better over the past couple of seasons).

A bit of luck over the past couple of months would have seen us win a good few more points, but if you're relying on luck, you aren't good enough.

Of course, we have to create an extra 100% of blame to put on Fenty for being quintessentially Fentyish in his ability to pick ineffective managers, pinch the pennies so that decent players don't want to join us and just generally behave appallingly as we've heard from various sources in recent months. I began the season thinking he had always been well-meaning but too egotistical and simply terribly crap at running a football club. His actions during the season mean that I no-longer think he is at all well-meaning.

Letting certain players go at the end of last season, retaining the wrong players at the end of last season, penny pinching at the start of this season, being the only club that edged its bets on the season being cancelled, waiting too long to sack a manger again.

One big lump of fenty with a generous dollop of insane Ian for me.

Quoted from promotion plaice

After tonight's results even the most optimistic must now realise we are down.

So what went wrong?

JF's penny pinching the main culprit for me, Covid clauses etc.

Covid.
Yes we can blame JF, penny pinching , etc etc ...and i would love to ...........but look back to end of the previous season, Holloway had a hard working side, playing some neat football and the games were pretty enjoyable. Things were looking brighter.

Covid struck, the board/ club gambled on the season not starting and certainly not finishing and set course for the cheapest route through it.  So we signed cheap, poor players and dissinterested players with attitude/ application issues, so many loanees you couldnt play them all. Holloway definately lost the plot mentally as well.

More wrong decisions by the board regards investors and Holloway fled when the game was rumbled.

Hurst probably acted too swiftly in axing most of the Holloway squad creating too much disruption but he will have his reasons, he could have walked into a right shambles at the training ground when he took over and decided most of them didnt have the desire or dedication he would demand.